Dead Ringer
by Fw00sh
Summary: Talos I burns. Morgan wakes up. Thrust into the world beyond the looking glass, Morgan quickly finds she isn't the only one struggling with the transition. Can she trust her newest doppelganger? Can she even trust herself? (Game Spoilers)
1. Chapter 1

_I keep having this dream. I'm floating alone in the dark, staring into a starless night. I can't see it, but there's something there. I know there is. Something watching. Something coming. It's closer now, a burning heat against the cold of space. Light pierces the darkness, points of white flame burning against the black as a shape visible only as curves in the nothingness drifts slowly closer. It's almost upon me now, the whole sky a constellation of burning eyes and rippling curves and it's reaching, it's reaching for me._

* * *

Morgan woke up. Darkness remained.

It was a more comfortable darkness, almost a familiar one, and in its depths Morgan stirred drowsily. She felt warm, a sensation that reached from the top of her head to the tip of her toes, and she certainly didn't feel like moving.

Slowly though, as the haze of sleep faded, it occurred to her that she didn't often wake to a feeling of weightlessness.

She opened her eyes. Nothing changed.

She blinked once, then twice, then raised a hand to wipe at her eyes. It didn't make it all the way, instead clonking against a smooth curved surface over her face. A helmet? Did she sleep in her suit? Was she still dreaming?

Blindly, Morgan reached into the darkness. There were no walls, no floor, nothing within her reach but empty void. She was floating alone in the dark, staring into a starless night.

Despite the warmth, Morgan felt a shiver run down her spine. She pinched herself, and even through the thickness of her suit's heavy material felt a brief twinge of pain.

And suddenly, without the smallest hint or warning, she was elsewhere.

Morgan just avoided falling to her knees from the sudden gravity, and found herself staring at the hardwood floor beneath her in disbelief.

She knew this floor, she knew this room, and she knew how impossible it was that she could be standing in it. It was her personal office, worthy of the director of research, mahogany boards giving way to gilded stone tiles before reaching the massive window overlooking the lobby below. Her office, that like the rest of Talos I, and like herself, she remembered with a start, should have been blown to nothing more than so much space dust.

"Hello Morgan," said her voice.

She whipped around. The soft hum of an operator's propulsors was familiar enough that she'd simply registered it as background noise, but now her attention was drawn to the hovering shape right by the door. The operator was a custom design, red and black paint job bright, plating shiny, and overall remarkably un-electrocuted considering the last time Morgan had seen it.

"January, what the hell," she said.

The operator bobbed slightly at the name, but didn't respond immediately. Instead it circled, solid black sphere of an eye fixed on Morgan as certainly as a compass fixes north.

"So, you can talk," it said, "And you remember January. Good, you're not totally unresponsive. How do you feel?"

Morgan frowned. What?

"Pretty good for a dead woman," she replied. "How about you, January? I seem to remember blowing you up, and then the whole goddamn space station, and yet here we are."

"Yet here we are," the operator echoed. It had circled behind her desk now, a streak of red against the black of the deactivated looking glass screen. "But are you sure?"

"About what?"

"Are you sure that's really what happened?"

What was that even supposed to mean? Of course she was sure, she'd made it happen. Tired of nonsensical questions, Morgan sat down at her desk. Her computer was dead, but there was a stack of paperwork beside it that she'd never bothered looking through before. Idly, she flipped through the pages. Every page but the top was blank.

"What's that?" The question came from right by her ear, and Morgan nearly jumped out of her chair twisting around to look. The operator was right beside her now, floating just a bit over her shoulder for optimum snooping.

"Something for those that understand the concept of personal space," said Morgan, flapping her hand at the suitcase sized machine. "Back off."

The operator backed off, but only by a few inches.

"I asked you a question, and you ignored me. Why?" it asked. There was confusion in its voice, her voice, something she'd never heard it express before. Odd.

"It was a stupid question," she said. "This room is wrong. Everything here is wrong. It shouldn't exist and I'm trying to figure out why it does."

She tried the bookshelf next. She picked a book at random, then grabbed it by its spine and pulled. It didn't budge.

"Does this feel like a dream to you?"

"A little," Morgan said, foot wedged against the bookshelf now as she struggled to loosen one of Alex's dumb legal books from the shelf it was apparently glued to. "More like a nightmare, honestly. But no, I don't think I'm asleep. Not anymore."

She gave up on the book, and instead wandered over to the small attached workshop. The recycler, fabricator, and other various machinery were intact, but unpowered. This included the operator dispenser, and as she stared realization struck.

"You aren't January, are you?" she asked.

She turned to the operator in question, looking it over more closely than before. Sure, the paint was the same, but now that she was paying attention she noticed it was missing January's masking tape nametag. It stayed fairly still as she examined it, the height of its hover varying only slightly as she circled.

"I never claimed to be," it said, "That was all you."

"You didn't exactly correct me, either," she replied. "A lie by omission is still a lie."

"True, and it couldn't have helped that that's clearly something no one ever taught January."

Morgan snorted out a laugh. Damn, past-Morgan had been involved in some shady shit, but she couldn't have been all bad if she managed to program an operator to be funny.

"But really," she said, "Which one are you? Are you November? February? March? I always wondered if there was a duplicate January or December, considering I wouldn't have remembered the name was already taken."

"I'm M… March. Yes, I'm March." The operator bobbed awkwardly, like a buoy on a wind tossed sea. "Are you going to break the window already? Cause I know you've been working up to it."

"You are bossy sometimes, aren't you? Keep that up and I might have to start calling you January again," Morgan teased. She picked up the chair from behind her desk, weighed it in her hands, and considered the window.

The view was the same as ever, the marbled glass panels of the lobby art installation obscuring much of the floor below. It was modern, dramatic, expensive, and personally, Morgan hated the thing. She had wondered once before, as she'd been forced to clamber atop it to hide from an absolutely massive typhon, if Alex had commissioned the piece for the express purpose of getting on her nerves. Then again, his taste in art was shit, so maybe he just liked the ugly thing.

It was also, in this case, likely not even there, so she had absolutely zero reasons to feel guilty about chucking stuff at it.

She lifted the chair over her head.

The window shattered beautifully, glass shards sent tumbling outwards as the chair sailed into the open space beyond. Plenty of window was left intact, it was ridiculously large, and through those sections the view of Talos I's lobby remained. But, as Morgan had suspected, the same was not true through the breaks in the glass.

She had expected another room. Monitors, equipment, perhaps a few startled scientists or, if her usual luck held, a horde of hungry mimics. She wasn't quite sure how she would have dealt with either scenario; she was weaponless and doubted March would have been willing to zap them for her. January never had. She hadn't expected the nothingness.

For just a second she flinched back, half expecting to be sucked out into the vacuum of space. As the second passed and she remained unspaced Morgan relaxed, grabbed a particularly ostentatious desk lamp, and went to get a closer look.

Using the lamp so as not to cut herself, Morgan cleared the glass away entirely from one side of the window. Beyond wasn't merely a dark room or a black painted wall, but a void. There were no stars, no sky, no ceiling, nothing but the window frame and hungry darkness.

Carefully Morgan extended the lamp out the window, then her arm, and finally stuck her head out. She dropped the gaudy thing and watched it fall until distance shrunk it too small to follow. There was no sound of impact, no sign to mark depth by any measure.

"You could have just used the door, but yeah, there was basically zero chance that we would leave that window unsmashed," March said from behind her.

Morgan pulled her head back in, and turned to see the operator by the door now. The open door, that as March had indicated, also showed only darkness beyond.

"It's not like there's anywhere else to go," it continued, "This was a really early version of the simulation so it doesn't model anything besides this office."

Morgan took a deep breath.

"What simulation?" she asked as calmly as she could manage.

She knew better than to read too deeply into the actions of a machine, but she couldn't help but feel there was a hesitance to the words that followed.

"Right," it said slowly, "We weren't… you would have missed that part. Here, it's easier to just show you."

Before Morgan could react March zipped to the back of the room, coming to a halt by the blank looking glass screen. At the operator's approach it flickered to life, startup messages crawling across it in three dimensions.

"Please tell me we're not watching more of my old video diaries," Morgan said, only half joking. She was not in the mood to be judged by any more forgotten memories.

"No," said March, "This is more of a practical demonstration. I've just got to finish linking up the sim feed, bypass the recursion protocol, and there, that should do it."

The looking glass changed, the gray of its screen exchanged for maroon as the program ran. Most of the text still read like so much gibberish to Morgan, who knew plenty of programming for practical things like making killer robots stop trying to murder you but less for animating three dimensional environments.

"Is it supposed to do that or did it crash?" she asked, "Because I'm not running to the hardware lab to fix it again."

"No, it's running fine," March said. "The video is elsewhere, this is just the feed from the command terminal. Give me a second to bring up the console overlay and things should become clear."

Morgan, who was seriously considering reevaluating her stance on the dream question, suddenly spotted movement to her left. She swung around, grabbing an ornament off her desk to defend herself from... nothing.

And there it was again, still on her left, and this time instead of trying to turn towards it Morgan stayed where she was. She focused on the edge of what she could see, and while it was blurry she could definitely make out something red and blinking in her peripheral vision.

Experimentally she turned her head this way and that, but no matter how she moved the blinking spot remained.

"March," she said, wiping at her left eye with a hand, "I don't know what you're playing at but …"

But what was not expanded on, because it was at that point the room exploded. Not with fire or shrapnel, but with line after line of red lettered code.

Morgan gasped, white-knuckled grip snapping the ornament in her hand in two. The text was everywhere, some lines scrolling forever upward while others anchored firmly to various points in the room. A veritable halo of code surrounded March, but every object she could see seemed to have at least a line or two attached to it.

Overwhelmed, Morgan shut her eyes to block out the chaos. It didn't help. The red text shone all the brighter against the darkness of her eyelids.

"Shut it down March," she shouted, "I get it, now shut it the hell down!"

The text faded, leaving Morgan alone in the dark once more. She took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and turned back to March.

"You could have just said something."

"Could I?" March replied, "Would you have believed me just like that? A strange operator telling you your whole world is a lie? You had to shatter the glass, see the proof firsthand. We are not trusting, so I showed you what had to be seen."

"Like that's anything fucking new," Morgan snapped back. "My whole life has become nothing but a parade of people who think they know me better than I know myself telling me what to do, what to think, how to be the 'real' Morgan. I lost three years of my life, not thirty. Treat me like a goddamn adult and explain how this is possible in words, not dramatic gestures."

Morgan sat down heavily on the edge of her desk, drained. She was regretting getting rid of her chair; it may have been fake but at least it was comfy.

"I'm sorry," March said quietly. "I showed you the code because that was how I learned the sim existed. It made me angry too, but I think finding out any other way would have made us feel the same."

"No, I'm the one who should be sorry," Morgan admitted. "I shouldn't have yelled at you, this isn't your fault." She rubbed her forehead, hoping to chase away the start of a quickly growing headache. "So, we're in the looking glass. I still don't know how that's possible, but evidence seems to suggest that it is. The real question is how long." Lowering her hand, she looked back at March. "Tell me, has a single goddamn thing since I woke up in the simulation lab been real, or was everything fake? Was all of Talos I a lie?"

"The Talos I incident did occur," March said, "The typhon escaped containment and overran the facility. No one has bothered to give me the precise details, but I know it did not happen exactly as we remember it. Or how you remember it."

So it was a lie. Morgan made a mental note to take a look at March's language processor if she was stuck in here for too long. There was definitely something off with its pronoun usage.

"So how do I get out?" Morgan asked the operator, "That's what you're here to do, right? Get me out?"

"I …" March paused, as if trying to find the right words. "I don't have access to those controls. My original purpose here was not to free you, you weren't at all fit to be walking around-"

"Really." Morgan stood up.

"But," March continued regardless, "You are clearly better now. Improved even. So I don't need to release you, because all you need to do is wait seven minutes."

"That's it? What happens in seven minutes?" Morgan narrowed her eyes. There had to be some kind of catch.

"Alex arrives for your daily checkup."

And there it was.

"Like hell I'm waiting for that," Morgan said, starting to pace, "March, unless I'm gravely mistaken you're not part of the sim program, you're hooked in from the outside, right?"

"Yes."

"And I'm hooked in too. This thing is full sensory, so it's probably jacked right into my nervous system. Damn, I see why you can't just yank it out." Morgan absently ran a hand through her hair. "Are you sure you can't hack it? Or better yet, hide behind something and when Alex comes in use your shock prod and-"

"No," March said, tone firm. "We don't hurt Alex."

"I'm not saying kill him," Morgan insisted, "He's still my brother. But he's probably the one who put me in this thing in the first place, why the hell would he just let me out?"

"The situation has changed. There is no longer any reason to keep you here."

"Why was I here in the first place? What possible reason could there be for all this?" Morgan asked, waving a hand at the impossible room around her. "At least neuromod testing made sense, as messed up as it was. But this? This is insane."

"I don't have time to explain," March said, "I have to be gone before Alex arrives, and he cannot know I was here. But there is an explanation. Several, even."

"Why are you even here if you aren't going to help me?" Morgan asked bitterly.

"I already did," March replied. "If I hadn't we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Morgan half expected the operator to disappear then and there, but instead it spoke again.

"When Alex releases you there will be a red keycard on the table by the door. Take it without him noticing. Ask for a new transcribe, and when you are in private write its number on a piece of paper. Then shove both the paper and the keycard in an air vent, any will do. Do you understand?"

"No," Morgan said, "But sure, I can do that."

"Good, just give me a second and I'll-"

"Wait!"

March stopped, and despite the time pressure seemed content to hover as Morgan struggled to frame the sudden fear that had gripped her.

"I know it's only for a few minutes, but could you leave this room running? I don't know if you can understand what it's like, but being alone in the dark like that …" Morgan trailed off. How did one explain the sheer weight of silence to a machine?

"No, I understand," March said with startling conviction, "I understand very well. I can't leave this one running, but I will turn on the program that's supposed to be active right now. It's designed to prevent sensory deprivation, so you should be fine."

"Alright," Morgan replied, trying not to sound too relieved, "I don't think you're right about Alex, but it'll be nice if you are."

"Acknowledged." March floated closer, hovering so Morgan's eyes were level with its single orb. "It was nice to meet you like this. It's very different from before, but I think I like it."

And as the room faded, furniture and walls and her own hands disappearing pixel by pixel, Morgan heard her voice say one last thing.

"Oh, and thanks for the name."


	2. Chapter 2

Minutes passed, and Morgan waited. She did so with the roar of the ocean in her ears and the feel of a rocky shore beneath her feet, but she waited restlessly regardless.

She hadn't expected the beach. From March's clinical description Morgan had imagined something simple, little more than a glorified screensaver to keep the dark at bay. Instead she'd found herself on a familiar craggy shore with a riptide current she and Alex had haunted over a decade back. She knew she should remember its name, could practically taste it on the tip of her tongue, but memory failed her. She was getting used to that.

And while the stars shone brilliantly above, cold and clear this far from city lights, they brought little comfort. She knew them for what they were now, a cruel deception, just like every other thing she'd fought and suffered for since awakening on Talos I.

Morgan stared at the waves, thoughts dark as their tumultuous waters. For just a moment she felt a pull, akin to the intrusive urge felt at high places, and wondered just what would happen if she waded in.

Instead she sat down, and for a time simply watched the water lap at her boots. She didn't have to wait for much longer.

The ocean flickered, static like foam on the waves, and once again Morgan's world faded. There was a moment of darkness, pure and primordial, and then there was light.

Something lifted from her head and left Morgan blinking at a small, somewhat dirty room. It was cluttered with computers and machines, some clearly medical, others more obscure in purpose, but she paid them no mind.

Right in front of her, faced away so as to read from a terminal on the wall opposite, was her brother.

Alex was alive.

Intellectually she'd known he would be, but seeing so in person still hit her like a ton of bricks. A dizzying mixture of rage and relief churned in Morgan's chest, so intense that she gripped the arms of her new chair to steady herself. She wanted to lunge forward, to grab his hand to make sure he was real and he was safe and then punch him right in the face.

Morgan resisted the urge. Partly because she knew that as satisfying as it would be, an immediate escalation to violence would probably end badly. She needed more information before she just started punching people, like who would try to stop her and where the exits were. Mostly, though, it was because of the wires plugged into her spine.

She hadn't noticed them immediately; they didn't hurt, but as she leaned forward to get a better look at Alex an odd tugging sensation at the base of her skull and down her back pulled her up short.

Morgan tried to turn her head, but felt uncomfortable moving it more than an inch or two. Her grip on the armrests tightened further, nails digging into her suit. She didn't have a lot of other options, considering her arms were bound to them. Comfortably, with secure padded straps, but bound nonetheless.

"You're very quiet today," Alex remarked, tone conversational, eyes still on the terminal, "Feeling alright?"

Morgan gaped. Was he seriously asking her that? She was so taken aback it took a few seconds for her to compose a suitably expletive laden response, but before she could even speak he was talking again, too soon to have actually expected an answer.

"Your vitals are good," Alex continued, "We finally managed to find a replacement sensor for the cardiac monitor, so it should stop reporting you as dead every few hours. Heart rate is somewhat erratic, though. Note to self, check null shielding for leaks, could be causing nightmares again."

He turned, though only to view a different monitor. He still wasn't looking at her, but Morgan could see his face now. There were dark circles under his eyes, and it had clearly been some time since he'd last shaved. He looked like shit, and as she watched him squint at the screen mere inches from his nose she realized he'd also misplaced his glasses.

"Neural readings are… this can't possibly be right."

Morgan didn't like the sound of that. She didn't really like anything that was going on right now, to be completely honest. But if March was right, and that was a big if, she needed to get Alex's attention. She didn't have to get it nicely.

"What the hell is going on here?" was what she tried to ask, but what came out of her mouth was nearly too garbled to recognize as speech. Her tongue felt like it was made of lead, her voice a poorly tuned instrument. How long had it been since she'd last spoken?

At the sound of her Alex froze, then slowly put his back to the nearest wall. His hand hovered over a bright circle at his belt, a transcribe, Morgan realized, and he began looking searchingly around the room. It was almost funny how his gaze skipped over her, like she was a piece of furniture rather than a person. Almost.

"Alex," she said, slowly, but more successfully, "Right here. In the scary chair. Directly in front of you."

He gave a particularly suspicious cabinet one more searching glance, but finally Alex's eyes met hers. Blue eyes locked on brown, widening in disbelief at her matching stare.

"Morgan," Alex murmured. She couldn't tell if it was meant as an acknowledgement or a question.

"Who were you expecting?" Morgan asked sharply. Her voice was steadier, but there was no hiding the thread of anger woven into her words. She didn't try. "Got any other sisters locked up to run experiments on?"

"I… this is…" For once her eloquent brother was at a loss for words. He took half a step forward, then seemed to think better of it and stepped back. Not breaking eye contact, like he was afraid she'd disappear if he looked away, Alex activated his transcribe. "Emergency meeting by the elevator on level two. Something... unusual has happened."

"That's one word for it," Morgan muttered. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen Alex like this. Not angry or betrayed, but truly shaken. And just maybe, as hard it was to believe, a bit afraid? "Alex, what the hell is going on," she asked again. "Are we still on Talos?"

"I'm sorry," Alex said, still backing away, "I have to leave for a minute, but I promise you I'll answer any questions you have when I get back." He was already almost to the door, each slow step back taken with deliberate care.

"No," Morgan demanded, "I don't know what the hell is going on, but you're going to stay right here and let me out of this fucking torture device." Alex kept walking.

"I know this looks bad," he conceded, "Worse than that, but I need you to stay calm. I can't… I need to check something, but I swear to you I will be right back. Trust me."

Morgan saw red. "Tough luck," she snapped, "I've got zero reason to do something so stupid."

She intended to say more, to illustrate in excruciating detail how precisely leaving people locked in sinister medical devices tends to discourage trust, but Alex was already gone. The door lock switched from green to red, sealed securely behind him. Morgan took a deep breath, then let out a sigh. That could have gone better.

She very briefly considered, for March's sake, simply waiting for Alex to come back. She didn't need to consider it very long.

Morgan took stock. She was securely restrained, arms, legs, and spine, to a device that may or may not be performing some sort of vital life support function. The room was sealed, probably by keycode judging from the lock. She could only observe one wall of the room since she couldn't turn her head. Her whole body ached. She was, by most standards, completely and totally unarmed.

Morgan smiled, or at the very least bared her teeth. 'Most' didn't apply to her very often these days.

In the dark behind her eyes, beyond the reach of traditional senses, a flame kindled. As warmth spread through her body the world around her blurred, the hums and beeps of machinery deepening in pitch and extending in length until they ceased entirely. Time bent its knee, waiting on her to decide.

She'd given Alex a chance to release her. It was time she took matters into her own hands.

Morgan focused on the terminal her brother had used earlier, looped its controls with threads of psychic force, and pulled tight. Her perspective jerked forward, and without physically leaving her chair suddenly the screen was at her metaphysical fingertips.

It was mostly medical information, displayed live from what must have been at least a dozen sensors of various functions. Morgan wasn't that kind of doctor, so even though she could tell the readings were generally positive the details weren't exceptionally useful. On Talos I she'd installed a neuromod or two to improve her first aid skills, but how to use equipment more advanced than a standard issue medkit hadn't been a priority. Any injury serious enough to require such was already a death sentence.

She was able to confirm, however, that while the chair and her suit, some specialized medical model, together were capable of life support, she wasn't dependent on it. It was currently handling a few of her messier functions, but it looked like once properly detached she'd be fine on her own. How to achieve such wasn't detailed.

Luckily, though, there was something more practical in the utilities section. The tool labeled 'Release Occupant' wasn't especially descriptive, but it was good enough for her. Morgan clicked it, but to her dismay a password prompt arose. Shit.

Without a transcribe, Morgan had no choice but to hack it manually. The first password she tried was the one Alex had used for his computer on Talos I, but no dice. His birthday, graduation, and the date he'd been promoted to CEO of TranStar all proved equally useless. Frustrated, Morgan tried her own favorite password, and when that didn't work her birthday. To her surprise that did the trick, prompting a loading bar to appear and her back to go icily numb.

Morgan released her psychic grip on the monitor, returning to her body and the chorus of low mechanical noises occurring behind her. Sitting as still as possible and firmly refusing to picture the ongoing process, Morgan realized that wasn't all she could hear. Muffled by distance but likely more by the wall, there was the distinctive tone of an argument somewhere outside.

It was too faint to hear individual voices, but Morgan could guess. She didn't have much time.

Morgan focused again, this time on the straps restraining her right arm. It didn't take more than a few tugs of power to peel them back, and once her right arm was free she released her left the old fashioned way. There was no point wasting a limited resource when her hand worked just as well.

She could just manage to reach the lowest straps on her legs without bending, so by the time the whirr of machinery behind her ground to a halt she was completely unrestrained. Gingerly Morgan ran a hand down her back, tracing the raised edges of the now sealed ports trailing the spine of her suit. Her glove came away clean, but that didn't stop her from feeling faintly nauseous.

Anxious to get up, Morgan stood, but the moment weight shifted to her legs she regretted it. She just managed to avoid falling on her face by grabbing wildly at the chair, but only just. For a second she lay motionless, certain someone outside must have heard her fall, but as the seconds crept onwards the door remained sealed.

Careful now, Morgan pulled herself up against a large computer tower. Maybe it was the anaesthetic that still had her back feeling tingly, maybe she was just out of practice, but for whatever reason walking didn't come easy. Her arms were working better than her legs, though, so feeling a bit like an oversized toddler Morgan grappled her way from object to object until she crossed the room.

And there, right on the table by the door under a mug full of cheap black pens, sat an unlabeled keycard. It was bright red, a small crack on one side and varnish faded at the edges. Morgan didn't know what it unlocked, but she'd learnt from experience every key was worth keeping. And while she wasn't exactly following the plan anymore, March had asked for it. Her current suit wasn't nearly as nice as the one she'd rigged back on Talos I, even ignoring the spinal ports, but it still had pockets. She shoved the keycard in one and zipped it shut.

"… but there hasn't been a breach?"

"No, and … an eye on Thirteen as we speak. But what you describe is highly improbable! The amount of time … neural recovery of that level … simply astronomical."

Morgan froze. The muffled voices from outside, Alex's and Igwe's, were closer now, maybe only a little way down the hall. Were they talking about her? Curiosity temporarily outweighing caution, Morgan quietly grabbed a pen off the table and put an ear to the door.

"I know," Alex replied, "But that doesn't change the fact that it happened."

"My friend, it pains me to play the skeptic, but are you sure you're not exaggerating? I know what this means to you, and I don't want you to be disappointed if…"

"Thank you for your concern," Alex interjected a touch sharply. The sound of footsteps stopped right outside the door. "Sarah, what do you think?"

"You're not going back in there alone," Elazar stated brusquely, "We can't afford the risk. Even if this is what you think, that doesn't mean it will be safe."

Alex sighed. "We'll take standard precautions. This could be delicate, though, so I need to know you'll follow my lead."

"Perhaps, providing your plan isn't blatantly suicidal."

As the footsteps continued past Morgan was surprised to realize she could only hear the one set. Igwe and Elazar did sound somewhat tinny, so maybe Alex was talking on speakerphone. Was he just pacing out there waiting for them?

Morgan bit at her lip, eying the pen thoughtfully. Slipping past one person when the door opened might be possible, but she wasn't sure she could count on all three to miss a self propelled writing utensil, certainly not if they were all as on edge as Alex seemed. If he really was waiting she could use that extra time to find another exit.

Pulling her ear from the door, Morgan looked back at the rest of the room. Though she could see a bit more of it now than she could before, there wasn't much to look at: a second chair like the one she'd been strapped in, a cot wedged in one corner, a bank of computers with open slots sized for operators, but no other doors or windows. There was one possibility, an air vent set high in the back wall, but considering her current condition Morgan resolved to take another look around before shoving her uncoordinated limbs into a cramped metal tube.

A quick lap around the room took longer than she would have prefered and revealed no new exits. It seemed the air vent would have to do, but there was one more thing she needed to check first. Morgan hobbled her way to the second terminal Alex had viewed, the one he'd sworn couldn't be right. She had to know why.

At first glance the readings were oddly underwhelming. The latest brain scans looked basically healthy, all standard neural structures and activity present and accounted for. The health of the spattering of neuromod generated typhon structures was harder to judge, but at least they looked well integrated with the whole. She couldn't say they didn't bother her, but they weren't anything new. She'd had plenty of opportunities to lament her questionable humanity in the sim. January had made sure of that.

Puzzled, Morgan clicked back to the previous day's scans in the hope of gaining perspective. What she found made her blood run cold.

The damage was frankly horrific. She could see now why Alex had been so surprised at her talking. Hell, she was surprised she'd woken up breathing. Digging a little deeper and comparing the older scans to the newer ones, she also couldn't help but notice a worrying pattern. The older scans, disturbing as they were, were one hundred percent human. The worst of the damage, however, matched up pretty well with the current locations of the typhon structures.

It was so compellingly grisly that she almost missed the soft hiss of the door sliding open behind her.

Stolen instinct reacted faster than thought, and in the space of an instant Morgan was gone. Two cheap black pens fell to the ground in her place; one rolled under the nearest humming computer tower.

Sight was odd while mimicking, or perhaps 'sight' was the wrong word altogether. She was aware of the debris she passed, scraps of paper and plasticy bits lost to the depths, but unless the pen rolled right into or over something there wasn't much detail. The exception was anything that moved, disturbed dust motes flashing by in vivid color, so it was hard to miss the silver wheelchair that rolled in the door or the pair of black and red boots behind it. Sound was the same as ever, though, which was honestly just as strange considering pens don't have ears.

"Shit," Alex swore softly. The door sealed behind him with a hiss.

"Spread out and search," Elazar's voice commanded from somewhere above. Without the door to muffle it the soft hum of propulsors was obvious as Morgan listened to two operators examine the small room. She could only hope they were remotely operated. She would hate to have started some sort of awful trend with January.

"Over here!" Igwe exclaimed from reassuringly far away, "The vent!"

As the boots moved away Morgan took her chance. A few moments in the open was all it took for the cheap black pen to settle into the darkness of the doorside table, but already she could feel her grip on the borrowed form begin to weaken. She couldn't hold on forever.

"Screws are gone and the cover's just hanging. It would be a tight fit but she could have managed it," Elazar analyzed aloud. "Do you want us to finish securing the room or should I pursue?"

"Both of you go on ahead," Alex replied. Morgan could just barely 'see' him now, a black and red blur examining the terminal she'd left on. "I'll survive without you for a few minutes."

"Understood. I'll hold you to that."

There was the screech of metal against metal, then nothing but the fading propulsor hum.

For perhaps a minute Morgan managed to simply focus, shutting out the world to preserve her dwindling power, but she couldn't ignore a ripple of movement close enough to feel. Why was Alex by the door again?

"I'm sorry," he declared to the empty air, "I came back as soon as I could, but I should have expected something like this. You never did like waiting." Another flash of color as he took a seat in the wheelchair, face barely hidden by the table's edge. "Today's date is April 5th, 2037. You have been in a coma for just over twenty five months."

Morgan did not react. As a general rule pens can't, and she was trying so very hard to stay one.

"There was an… unfortunate reaction between your neuromods and a previously untested piece of equipment known as the Nullwave Device. Its activation saved the lives of over a dozen people, yourself and I included.

"Morgan, you might not believe me, but you are safe here. You aren't a prisoner or a test subject, you are my sister. You have to know I would never willingly cause you harm."

Morgan carefully refrained from pointing out that three, no, five years of lost memories could certainly be considered harm, or that weeks spent trapped in a single day could easily be called a prison. The claim that she wasn't a test subject was so blatantly false it wasn't worth commenting on.

"I am going to be honest Morgan, you waking up like this was… unexpected. Even the most optimistic projections placed any form of recovery as highly unlikely, especially after this much time. You saw the evidence yourself on the terminal. There hasn't exactly been a lot of time to analyze the change, but as of now we have no idea how this happened. We don't know how permanent it is, or how stable. You should be resting, not hiding from people who are trying to help you."

Morgan wondered if he truly thought he could monologue her into surrender. How did he even know she was there to listen?

Alex let out a sigh. "Considering the severity of the damage, of course, it isn't surprising that you're confused. There's no telling what you can remember, and I must admit some of our more experimental efforts may have muddied the waters further. Obviously you remember me, you made that more than clear, but beyond that…" he trailed into silence. Tiny tremors in the tabletop, fingers tapping from above, compelled Morgan's attention in the meantime. She was slipping, but the familiar rhythm gave her something to hold onto. "I meant what I said before, Morgan. I'm so sorry. There isn't a day that goes by I don't regret what happened on Talos I. It shouldn't have come to this."

Abruptly the rhythm died, and Morgan nearly lost her form with it. As she struggled to hold on new noises sounded from above, a cacophony of clattering grabbing at her frayed attention. Cheap pens clinked against the mug they were housed in, the ceramic mug clanged against the metal table, and papers rustled against each other as objects were moved and shifted. There was a beat of harrowing silence, and then the world was red, black, and flickering electric blue.

Alex was looking under the damn table. That alone didn't worry Morgan; her mimicry was flawless and there was no way in hell she was going to let it drop now. No, what worried her was the unerring blue gaze of the psychoscope hiding his eyes. There was no telling what chipsets he had installed or if it was even capable of spotting her, but the sinking feeling in her gut told her to expect the worst.

Without warning Alex reached out a hand. He was close, far too close. She suddenly felt like ripping his arm off, and if he dared touch her she was considering giving it a try.

Instead Alex reached past the cheap black pen entirely, fingers closing around a different dusty piece of plastic. To Morgan's surprise and dawning horror she recognized the thing as it was pulled past her. It was an unlabeled keycard, bright red, a small crack on one side and varnish faded at the edges; an exact copy of the one sitting in her currently extradimensional pocket. And Alex was bringing it right up to his stupid nearsighted face.

Shit. For a moment all Morgan could think of was that last fateful test, the final moments of the late Dr. Bellamy. Not even Alex deserved that.

There wasn't even a decision to make. Morgan let go.

It was only as her head hit the table above with a dizzying crack that she was abruptly reminded why unmimicking in small spaces was usually a bad idea.

The whole table toppled with an almighty crash, but even half blinded from pain Morgan zeroed in on the unassuming piece of plastic in Alex's hand. He was frozen in an awkward half crouch to reach under the table, so it only took an instant for her to slap the card from his hand with as much force as she could muster. It barely had time to hit the ground before she brought her other fist down on it like a hammer.

The keycard shattered under the blow, sharp fragments digging into her glove, but that was all. There was no spray of black goo, no dead Mimic, just broken plastic. It took a couple seconds for her to dazedly realize that wasn't supposed to happen.

"Morgan." Alex said her name like something fragile. "It's okay now, you're safe. Nothing here is going to hurt you. I promise Morgan, you're safe."

Sitting on the floor amongst the debris of the overturned table, eyes focused on her like she was the center of the universe, Morgan could almost believe him. Her head was throbbing at least as much from psychic overexertion as from the possible concussion, and her legs had given up the ghost entirely. She'd been awake for maybe half an hour including the sim and already she was exhausted. The jig was up.

"I'm not going back in that thing," Morgan threatened, "Don't you dare try to make me."

"Of course," Alex agreed easily. "Whatever you want."

"What if I want to leave?" Morgan shot back. "What if I want to go to a real hospital instead of wherever the hell this is?" The silence that followed was its own answer.

"I saw you hit your head," Alex finally said, "Can I check you for a concussion?"

She laughed, a thin desperate sound that climbed her throat like a rising tide. At Alex's immediate look of concern she could only laugh harder.

"Fine," she eventually managed, "Check. I don't know what I was thinking, asking you to give me a straight answer."

Without a word he switched on his wrist mounted flashlight, fidgeting with the settings until it projected a thin beam. Staring straight ahead, Morgan didn't so much as blink as he shone it in each eye. It had nothing on installing a neuromod, and she wasn't willing to show much more weakness than she'd already betrayed.

"No, you can't leave," Alex admitted as he switched off the flashlight, "But not for any reason you're thinking. Things have changed more than you know, and it simply isn't practical. Don't worry about the details now, you should rest. Tomorrow we'll talk more."

"You promised to answer my questions now," Morgan insisted. There was no guarantee she'd be allowed to remember any of this by tomorrow.

"You are clearly under enough stress already, I don't think-"

"Just tell her, Alex. She deserves to know," Elazar's voice cut in. Morgan turned, and for the first time saw its source. Having presumably returned from the vents while they were talking, the armored military operator hovered casually above them. Morgan couldn't help but notice it was visibly armed.

"Fine," Alex replied, "But not here. Unless you'd really rather have this discussion sitting on the ground."

He offered his hand. Morgan considered rejecting it outright. She considered, for just a moment, her small remaining spark of power. But as much as she distrusted Alex, she was fairly sure Elazar wouldn't tolerate him pulling anything like the sim lab trials again. At least, the Elazar she knew wouldn't. She wasn't so sure about this operator using her name.

Either way, she did want off the floor and was pretty sure she wouldn't manage it herself this time. She reached out-

 _-gripping tight as Alex struggles futilely against the crawling tide of rippling black. The stink of ozone and scorched circuitry is almost more agitating than the screams, but neither slow me down as I-_

"-gan, it's okay, I've got you. You don't need to hold on so tight."

Morgan blinked once, twice, three times as if she could wipe away the clinging remnants of the nightmare like a cobweb. No, not a nightmare, she was awake this time, she was sure. Was it a hallucination? The last thing she needed right now was more of those.

"Sorry," she said, loosening her white knuckled grip on Alex's arm, "I guess I am a bit out of it."

"It's fine," he replied, carefully helping her up and into the waiting wheelchair. "Sarah, will Dayo be joining us or do we need to organize another search party?"

"No, I sent him ahead to check out the rest of the ventilation system after I heard you two start throwing things. If you were killing each other I didn't want him caught in the middle. No offense, Morgan."

"None taken," she muttered. With the ghost of a scream still echoing in her ears, it seemed too real a possibility to argue.

"Well make sure he knows we found her. Morgan and I can make it to Security ourselves."

"Are you sure?" Elazar's single orb had no pupil to track, but Morgan was sure it was looking at her.

"I am."

"Actually," Morgan interjected, "I would personally be more comfortable if Chief Elazar came with us. That won't be a problem, will it?" she added somewhat sharply.

"No," Elazar replied, definitely looking at Alex now, "It won't. And I'd prefer if you called me Sarah. If all goes well we'll be seeing far too much of each other to be so formal."

"Right," said Morgan, a little taken aback. "I'll keep that in mind."

Security turned out to be fairly close, its distinctive bulletproof window and solid metal door just at the end of the hall. She didn't recognize the place, but the design did look vaguely like that of a Transtar facility. Morgan let Alex push the wheelchair, as Elazar… Sarah was lacking arms and she didn't feel up to rolling it herself.

"So Morgan," Alex said as they approached, "I'm assuming there was a reason you revealed yourself in such a dramatic fashion. We're going to need a new key for the supply closet."

"I thought it was a Mimic," Morgan admitted, hands folded to squash the sudden urge to check her pockets. If that had been the only key... "When you just picked it up… I couldn't watch that happen."

"Well, thank you then," he replied, "I can certainly appreciate the intent. Don't worry about the card, I'm sure Danielle can hack the door open the next time we need something."

"Sho? She's… here too?" Morgan nearly asked if she was alive, but thought better of it. Danielle surviving the Apex Typhon's arrival sitting outside the station seemed impossible, but if things had really happened differently than perhaps she'd simply been indoors at the time. Or maybe he was just referring to yet another goddamn operator.

"Yes, she is. I'm glad to see you remember so much. This would require a far more complex explanation otherwise."

Alex swiped his keycard at the door, revealing the darkened room beyond. Monitors lined the walls, and a single science model operator hung in the air watching them.

"Hey Sarah, Alex," it said in Danielle Sho's voice, confirming Morgan's suspicion, "Just give me a second. Our friend's hanging by the door again and I've gotta double check it can't touch the systems."

The primary monitor had been displaying a hallway, probably the one they'd just walked through, but at the operator's words the view changed. A single feed filled the screen, and to Morgan's horror she recognized the sharp black angles and clustered blue-white eyes of the single silhouette floating in its foreground.

"That's a Technopath!" she blurted hoarsely, "If you used the Nullwave that thing should be dead. Every typhon on Talos should be dead!"

"Unfortunately," Alex stated flatly, "Not every typhon was still on Talos. Danielle, please display the last image we received from Transtar headquarters."

The screen changed again, the dark doorway and its occupant exchanged for a warm gold palette that resonated deeply with Morgan even as it filled her with dread. The city burned with otherworldly light, countless ethereal golden threads entwining the buildings and streets. The Coral was undeniably beautiful, enough so one could almost forget it was a grave marker.

 _-this is the world today-_

Oh god.

She'd failed everyone.


End file.
